The need of the hour is to go for an integrated plan for increased production of boro, aman and aush rice and wheat. One has to remember one point clearly: each year 1.5 million to 2 million new mouths are being added to the population and they need to be fed. The only way it could be done is by way of increasing food production and changing food habit. It can’t be done by any one individual ministry and division – it calls for an integrated programme by the government, writes Sayed Kamaluddin

Reforms needed in food and education sector
   While food scenario – both production, consumption and availability – remained by and large the most discussed topic in recent weeks, a news item in the media last week on poor schooling and its overall impact on the country’s education sector also sheepishly made its presence noticeable. The education story was based on the latest annual report of the University Grants Commission. The commission seems to have casually admitted that the quality of education in the universities – both in the public and more numerous and prosperous private sector universities – remained poor as before. The reason is very simple: the primary, secondary and higher secondary schools lack good quality teachers.
   The commission’s annual report for 2006, scheduled for publication in June 2007, was actually brought out last month. It is said the delay occurred because most universities delayed providing necessary information and statistics. The commission was established in 1973, publishes its report each year on the state of higher education in the country and with it gives its recommendations on how improvement could be made in different aspects of higher education. The UGC report crisply mentioned: Poor primary and secondary schooling results in low quality higher education. It added: ‘Most private universities have claimed lack of competent students remains the main barrier to improvement in higher education… Secondary and higher secondary educational institutions fail to produce competent students for lack of adequate and experienced teachers.’
   There are 27 public universities in the country but the report covered only 25 because two newest ones, Kabi Nazrul University in Mymensingh and Comilla University began formal operation last year. Till December 2006, the number of students enrolled in these institutions was about 12.5 million. Compared to this, the private universities, numbering 49 and more in the pipeline, enrolled only about 125,000 students. Most of the students prefer to attend public universities for two reasons – they are cheaper and better staffed. The best boys and girls usually go to the public universities while students from English-medium schools and those who failed in competition with better students in the public universities end up in the private universities.
   There also exist vast qualitative differences amongst the private universities. Only about top eight to 10 private universities provide reasonable facilities to their students including their own campuses, libraries, good teaching staff, science labs and acceptable academic environment. Majority of them are run by their unscrupulous promoters as a kind of business and the ‘motto’ is to make money. A few years ago, the University Grants Commission had marked as many as 10 private universities to be unsuitable for imparting any kind of education and recommended their immediate closure. It had also given notice to many others to improve facilities within a timeframe to retain their license. None of those marked universities was closed down and it is not quite known how others heeded to the UGC recommendations for improving facilities. The commission appears either reluctant to or is afraid of suggesting any harsh action against any of them.
   
   Pre-university training?
   Yes, that is exactly what the commission has recommended. The report said that students willing to pursue higher education should be provided with pre-university training in order to improve their ability to follow and absorb the teachers’ lectures. The commission seems to have completed its task by saying: ‘The quality of higher education is not satisfactory at present.’ This realisation may have been dawned on the commission now but there has never been any doubt in anybody’s mind about this conclusion. But it did not say how or who would be entrusted with the task of imparting the pre-university training and where the funding would come from.
   This is indeed a dismal situation and the commission should have discussed it in more details in its report and recommended strong remedial measures. Its observation is a direct aspersion on the quality of teachers who are currently engaged in imparting education at the primary and higher secondary level, and their ability to teach. The commission was established in 1973 and the teachers currently engaged in teaching were the product of the intervening period and therefore, it can’t shirk its responsibility by merely being critical of their teaching quality or the lack of it. The teachers are the victims of the system that the commission had been overseeing for the last quarter of a century. One might naturally ask: who is at fault really?
   As per rules, the commission is to submit its report each year to the parliament for taking any action as per its report. In other words, it is not only the responsibility of the commission but also of the parliament and therefore the government. The parliament includes both the ruling and the opposition parties and, therefore, all the MPs belonging to all the political parties and independent members, if any, are collectively responsible for the degeneration that has taken place over the years in our education system. Not that the MPs did not discuss anything about schools, colleges and education. But they only participated in such discussions to demand establishment of schools or colleges in their respective constituencies, never to initiate any discussions on how to improve the standard of teaching and improvement of education.
   In fact, for decades, they did not feel it necessary to initiate any reform to stem the degeneration process. So the problem that the University Grants Commission has mentioned in its report is too complex and nothing will ever happen by blaming the teachers and the low quality students that they produce annually. The solution is far beyond the ‘pre-university training’ as suggested by the commission. The whole system needs a thorough overhauling and it has to begin from the beginning.
   
   Food security: Long-term plan needed
   Now coming back to the question of ensuring food security, which has been discussed time and again at all level, the answer to it lies in the long-term, integrated agricultural planning. Reports on food shortages and sudden and abnormal rise in the prices of food items have made the cultivation and production of boro rice extremely important this year. Practically everybody – beginning from the agriculture adviser down to all kind of talk-show and seminar participants – is now saying that a bumper boro crop must be ensured by providing all inputs to the farmers on time. Nobody would dispute on this issue because March-April is the crucial period for boro production and the farmers’ need should be met at all cost and the job has to be done on a war footing. Indeed, this is one war that the nation can’t afford to lose.
   But the importance of the issue is lying elsewhere – need for a long-term and integrated agricultural policy planning, not any knee-jerk ad hocism policy as a damage control mechanism. This has been argued a few times in the past in this column. An integrated approach to improve agricultural production involving the ministries concerned based on a long-term planning is the answer and a knee-jerk reaction to save a desperate situation has no place any more. However, as speakers at a seminar last week pointed out that the boro production mechanism now being practised should teach the officials as well as the farmers a good lesson on how emergency situation could be tackled. Besides, there is also a silver lining visible in this crisis in that the farmers who were switching over to cash crop like corn from rice cultivation because of high cost of production and low rice price are said to be returning to rice cultivation.
   Once the boro season is over, aman and aush seasons follow. Aman is still a major rice crop like boro and for a good harvest farmers would also need timely supply of the necessary inputs. So, the officials concerned would have to keep in mind that once the hectic work of ensuring all farming inputs for boro such as fertiliser and energy is over, their job would be only half done. They would have to get equally busy to ensure supply of farm inputs for aman and aush. The agriculture ministry officials know what is to be done; they have to take the initiative to set the ball rolling.
   
   Integrated solution and investment
   The farmers know it well what the agriculture sector needs to do: integrated solution. No piece meal solution would do the job. Like all spheres of economic activities, agriculture sector too needs reliable statistics. For instance, the Centre for Policy Dialogue research chief suggested that while the officials have estimated that boro season requires 1.2 million tonnes of urea fertiliser the actual demand is 1.6 million tonnes. Last year fertiliser crisis developed during boro season and the job of the officials concerned is to see that it does not repeat during March-April this year, the boro peak period. Whoever and whatever was responsible for last year’s fertiliser crisis should now be eliminated for all time to come. It should be made clear to all concerned that heads will roll if it recurs this year or any time in future.
   A lot has been said about ensuring food security but practically nothing has actually been done to ensure it. As the World Food Programme’s Dhaka resident director suggested in last week’s seminar, Bangladesh agriculture sector needs more investment to augment food grains production. Food surplus nations are decreasing food exports and, therefore, Bangladesh has no alternative but to produce its own food to feed its people. So the need of the hour is to go for an integrated plan for increased production of boro, aman and aush rice and wheat. One has to remember one point clearly: each year 1.5 million to 2 million new mouths are being added to the population and they need to be fed. The only way it could be done is by way of increasing food production and changing food habit. It can’t be done by any one individual ministry and division – it calls for an integrated programme by the government.